Joseph Grigely is born in East Longmeadow in 1956. He lives and works in Chicago. Joseph Grigely creates works that explore the failures, idiosyncrasies, and ruptures of language and communication. Grigely has been deaf since childhood, a factor that has not only shaped his work, but has become a central concern. He first became known in the early 1990s for a series of works called Conversations with the Hearing. From small table tabletop tableaux and intimate wall-based works to room sized installations, these works grow from the scraps of paper and handwritten notes produces when he communicates with the hearing world – a strategy the artist employs to converse with people when he cannot read their lips. One of the ongoing themes in Grigely’s work is sound – from his own memories of sound as a child, to explorations of how sound might look.

« When I’m with friends I can often tell from their facial expressions that something auditory has happened. Is it something someone has said? Or something they’ve heard? In that kind of situation I often ask people to write things down for me. I learn lots about the world that way. » – Joseph Grigely

Joseph Grigely has been exhibited at MASS MoCA, Massachusetts (2023); Kunstverein Hamburg (2015); Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2009); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2008); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2001) and Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris (1996). He has taken part in numerous group shows, including Kunstmuseum Bern (2015), Centre Pompidou Metz (2011), Centre Georges Pompidou Paris (2001) and De Appel Amsterdam (1997). His work has been shown at the Whitney, Berlin, Sydney, Istanbul and Venice Biennales.